Disney has gotten a lot more expensive. We paid around $4000 (without airfare) for our family of 5 at CBR in 2016. That was with free dining. In 2018 it was around $5500 to stay at POR with a room discount and the dining plan. My kids were 9 and under both trips. In 2020, it was going to cost $6500-7000 for us at ASMo. My best friend was joining us, so I was going to be sharing a room with her. So we were paying for a room and a half. This was not a dining plan and was an estimate of dining costs. My oldest 2 were going to be 11. To me, those are big jumps in cost for trips only 2 years apart.
And we do take our own water bottles, take some snacks and sometimes eat breakfast in our room. We also use Disney Visa Rewards dollars for food. We bought some merchandise before our trip for the kids. The kids got gift cards for Christmas and birthdays from us and extended family. We also bought special things you can only buy in the parks, such as pick a Pearl, the retractable make your own light sabers, etc.
We do this too. We had a grocery delivery service the first day and saved a lot of money vs eating breakfast at restaurants, buying snacks at the parks, and buying water bottles in the parks. Nice side effect bonus: We slept a little longer and still made RD by eating breakfast in the room.
After reading this, just created an interesting chart - I had the historical Annual Pass prices in a spreadsheet already, so just looked up the median income in the US for each year.
Looks like back in 1999 APs cost 0.66% of US median income, which rose to 1.04% in 2009 and 1.77% in 2019.
I always get some anxiety seeing median income stats, because then it’s harder for me to justify complaining I don’t make enough and instead have to admit I need to do better on the spending/budgeting side.
My DS once tricked me. He asked me what the average of a set of numbers was. I calculated the average and told him. But then he said, “You never asked WHICH average.” I was like, “There is only one average.” And he said, “No there isn’t. You calculated the mean. But what if I wanted the mode or median?” I said, “Those aren’t the same things.” He said, “True. But average can mean any one of those three, so your answer depends on WHICH average.”
I then went on a long drawn out search to prove him wrong.
Stupid kids think they know everything. (Turns out…they do!)
